December 12, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"AMAZING VIDEO: Man Lifts 20 Ton Block By Hand"--Mystery History. The video is about a Michigan man who has discovered ways to easily move and lift blocks (he is using concrete) weighing several tons using only pebbles, counterweights, and stacks of wood. The video culminates with his raising a 20 ton block to an upright position, such as the upright stones at Stonehenge or the large obelisks raised by the ancient Egyptians. 

Firearms/Prepping/Self-Defense:

• In the same vein as the video linked to above: "Survival Saturday: Making a 'Flip-Flop' winch"--The Truth About Knives. A video and article discussing how to make an improvised winch to pull your vehicle out of sand/mud/what-have-you.
• "Shooting pocket pistols..... from the pocket?!?"--Carteach0. No surprise that the hammerless revolver worked the best. However, a small semi-auto actually did better than a small revolver with an exposed hammer.
• "DI--Do The Math"--Chiron. Rory Miller writes:

     I know, personally, five people who have been sent to the hospital for broken hands after closed-fist strikes to the head. A total of nine incidents (two of them were not fast learners).  One of them had been a trained amateur boxer. How many people have I known who needed medical treatment after receiving a closed fist strike to the head? None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

     Falling and hitting their heads? Yep. Being directed into a wall or piece of furniture? Sure. Head butting? Both accidental and deliberate. Even slaps (I didn't go to the hospital but should have, dizzy and puking for almost three days) C did, with a ruptured eardrum as well as a mild concussion.

     So is it a good technique/system whatever if you are far more likely to be injured by using it than the bad guy? (BTW, two of those people have permanent disability.)

• "Knuckle duster zip gun murder weapon"--Impro Guns. The .38 caliber zip-gun makes up the body of the handle, while attached to it is a spiked knuckle duster. The weapon was used in a murder in Brazil, and the suspect claims that he learned how to make the weapon while in prison.
• "Tribes, Super-tribes and Uber-tribes"--MacYoung's Musings. MacYoung notes the basic flaw with multiculturalism/globalism:

     Dunbar's number postulates that we can only maintain between 100 to 250 stable relationships. That is our actual ‘tribe’ (or village if you will). With a little mental gymnastics most people can be comfortable with the idea of a Super-tribe (lots of people like them). We start gritting our teeth at the Uber-tribe. Where people really glitch is when someone tries to promote the idea that the 'tribe' is global. Ummmm I owe tribal obligations to 7 billion people? Totally over the sanity horizon, for anyone not espousing it, is saying animals, trees and Mother Earth are also your tribe -- and you owe them the same obligations. 

     Riiiiiiiiiiiigght.

• "Different Tools, Different Times, Different Places"--The Zelman Partisans. A good discussion of fires and the need for different fire extinguishers (or at least a mix of the correct chemicals) for different types of fires, which the author then segues into a discussion of different firearms for different purposes and the international response (or lack thereof) to the recent wild fires in Israel (undoubtedly the result of arson).
• "Exclusive: How to Carry a Single-Stack 9mm"--Guns Magazine. The gist of the article is that the author likes to carry the weapon on one hip, and then balance it by carrying one or two extra magazines in a carrier on the opposite hip.
• "Intended Carjacking Victim Destroys Carjacker"--Active Self-Protection. A would-be carjacker picks the wrong vehicle and gets an educational beat-down. Video and discussion at the link.
• "How to get your car unstuck from snow"--Chicago Tribune.  Good advice on how to get your car unstuck. Of course, it is easier if you have a shovel and something to provide traction (sand, strips of carpet, etc.) in the trunk.

Other Stuff:

• Juxtaposition This:

• "Muslim State Secretary for Berlin voices her backing for Sharia law in Europe, saying it is 'absolute compatible' with German legislation"--Daily Mail. Note that Ms. Chebli is not wearing a hijab or other hair covering in her photograph. 

• "Woman who received death threats after vowing to go out without a hijab in Saudi Arabia is ARRESTED by morality police and now faces being LASHED"--Daily Mail.

• "Dallas Police and Fire Pension Board ends run on the bank, stops $154M in withdrawals"--Dallas Morning News (h/t Anonymous Conservative). The article reports:

     The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System's Board of Trustees suspended lump-sum withdrawals from the pension fund Thursday, staving off a possible restraining order and stopping $154 million in withdrawal requests.

     The system was set to pay out the weekly requests Friday. Pension officials said allowing the withdrawals would leave them without the liquid reserves required to sustain the $2.1 billion fund.

According to the article, one of the largest problems with the plan was a program called Deferred Retirement Option Plan that allowed police and firemen to "officially" retire, but still continue working. Thus, on top of their normal paycheck, they also received a retirement payment that was "deferred" into an account which for years guaranteed 8% interest. According to the article, the plan made hundreds of firemen and police millionaires.

• "Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Tweets 'We are all in Danger. It is evil itself'"--Red Flag. The tweet was accompanying a photograph of recently discovered pyramid shaped rock outcrops discovered in Antarctica. The article suggests that it was a warning concerning aliens or a lost civilization. While Aldrin was probably just trying to be funny (probably thinking about The Thing, or At The Mountains Of Madness)--I prefer to think that he was actually warning of the then-impending visit of John Kerry to the Antarctic.
• "Syphilis could become impossible to treat after a common strain of the STI has become resistant to antibiotics"--Daily Mail.

     In an analysis of syphilis samples, researchers by the University of Zurich found the most common to be SS14-Ω, a sub-set of SS14.

      Alarmingly, 90 per cent of the SS14-Ω samples they analysed were resistant to antibiotics.

• "President Obama Names His Biggest Failure: Gun Control"--The Truth About Guns. Well, Americans did buy over 100 million firearms under his watch, but I'm not sure I would count that as a failure. The economy, Libya, Syria, Obamacare, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen are all words that come to mind when I think of Obama's failures.
• Must be more of that "fake news": "Norwegian police arrest 20 men in dark web pedophile network investigation"--New York Daily News. According to the November 21, 2016, article, "many of the suspects are highly educated, and include lawyers and politicians." Interestingly, Vox Day indicates that the Washington Post has since scrubbed its site of the story.
• "After Aleppo, Syria's Assad still far from regaining his state"--Reuters. Having regained the most populous and productive regions of Syria, Assad is going to leave ISIS to the U.S. From the article:

     The president and his allies have focused their campaign on the populous, fertile, west of his country and few people expect him to lavish limited military resources on quickly retaking the eastern deserts or Euphrates valley area from Islamic State.

     The senior pro-Damascus official said that Assad had for now written off Raqqa, which has become the de facto Syrian capital of Islamic State, often referred to by the Arabic term Daesh, regarding the jihadist group as Washington's problem to fix.

     "The regime forgot about Raqqa a long time ago and made it the responsibility of the Americans. Let those alarmed by Daesh go and remove it," the official said.

• "Somali Refugees Arriving in U.S. at Highest Rate Ever in First Two Months of FY 2017"--Breitbart. The article indicates that "[b]etween October 1, 2016, the beginning of the fiscal year, and December 7, 2016, a total of 2,775 Somali refugees have arrived in the United States." ( H/t Anonymous Conservative). 
• "Moment documentary maker 'is punched, kicked and choked by five migrants' after entering 'no-go' zone in Swedish city"--Daily Mail. Wait! I thought "no-go" zones were "fake news."
• A succinct explanation of how feminism and the sexual revolution is undermining civilization, from Chateau Heartiste: 

     Whatever the disparity in the reproduction ratio, it is evident that throughout history more women than men reproduced. If this were not so, other selection pressures (e.g., child mortality) would have to take up the slack for the loss of a major driver of human evolution.

     What is also evident is that the dawn of civilization has had a dampening effect on female hypergamy. Civilization requires engaged and committed beta males. Lots of them. A sex market that radically disenfranchised a big chunk of those betas would sabotage any civilizational momentum. Severe sex restrictions and runaway female hypergamy can exist in a state of nature, but putatively only for short periods of time. Entrenched and unrestricted female hypergamy would sexually and reproductively dispossess too many men and remove the ROI [return on investment] foundation upon which advanced societies are built.